Middle School Math teacher Susanne Spector relishes being in the company of Middle School students because, “They are dreamers.  Anything is possible to them,” she says, noting that Green Hedges encourages students to participate in different areas of learning and personal development, to try on different dreams. “Everybody does athletics here!  Everybody does theater!” she exclaims appreciatively.  It is a philosophy that Mrs. Spector values in her own life.  She is an adventurer at heart who loves traveling to foreign countries and trying new things.

After earning a B.A. from the University of Kansas as a Mathematics major with emphasis in economics and French and doing graduate work in statistics, Mrs. Spector spent several years as a senior economist with the U.S. Department of Labor, traveling extensively in that role. Eventually, she returned to an earlier interest in child development and education, earning a teaching degree from Chapman University in Northern California.  Before coming to Green Hedges, Mrs. Spector served as Co-Academic Chair and Math Department Chair at the Loudoun School for Advanced Studies. 

For the most part, Mrs. Spector’s facility with math came naturally, but high school, when a calculus class seemed incomprehensible, she realized the value of personal, creative teaching.  “My tutor used a unique approach and what I couldn’t understand was now clear,” she remembers.  “I believe you have to make a lot of mistakes in order to learn math.  Mistakes are good –they mean you are trying,” she often tells her students.

Mrs. Spector was born and raised in Oklahoma, has traveled in 49 of the fifty states, and has lived in several of them.  She enjoys hiking, skiing, tennis, musicals, and travel.